A sliver of silver

  This week was the start of our 3rd week as a one car family, which really means Chad takes my car and I'm stranded for days. Grocery shopping, Christmas shopping and running errands at 8pm isn't always easy as most places start closing around then but that's been our life lately.
  Thankfully, my mom has been generous enough to let me steal her car on Tuesdays for a few hours so I don't loose my job! I'm able to go to work and she watches Liam for me...since she then becomes stranded without a car, why not throw my child at her too right? Liam is especially excited when we get out of the house because he's started to recognize what a rarity it is. Danica's helped too, she invites me to run errands with her (a heavenly act). Because who doesn't want a crazy almost 2 year old and his mom to tag along on menial trips to the grocery store? (Don't answer that). We've had some fun, we went to Bass Pro Shop in Tempe and hung out in Santas Wonderland and got to get out and go to a park too! Both major luxuries in our state but I think Dani could tell I was starting to loose my marbles at home and felt it was her sisterly duty to postpone the lose of any more marbles.
   On the bright side, it's really forced us to get creative with what we do to keep ourselves sane. I used to just drive to the closest park, or the San Tan mall to see the pets at the pet store and play at the kids area, or drive to grandmas or Danis house to visit friends, I'm sure he misses those trips. We've had fun though, we've made fake snow, cut out snowflakes and hung them on our wall, drawn on the sidewalk with chalk, swung on the swing in the front yard (thanks for making it for us Chad), we've read Christmas books, played with the nativity, made clay handprint ornaments for the grandparents, racked the leaves and jumped in the piles, made Christmas sugar cookies, watched Polar Express, ran around in circles, wrestled on the bed, played the piano, talked to the baby, face-timed dad at work, decorated and redecorated and redecorated the Christmas tree, cleaned everything 12 times or so and wrote out all our Christmas cards and walked to the "Mayo" box to deliver them. But as week three continues, our steam is running low and he's getting tired of the repetition. We have no more side walk to color, no more cookies to decorate, and if we have to watch Frozen one more time, I might throw something at our TV.
   Chad and I are trying our hardest to find the right car but we're not in any sort of place to settle or make a quick decision. This next car, HAS to last us. I'm finding that all those horrible car problems we had with my explorer earlier this year were in preparation for these last few weeks. I hate to bring any sort of a positive twist to those car problems because honestly it was a highly hellish ordeal at the time but I'm so grateful it happened when it did. We fixed everything on that dang car and now I know its going to last us a long long time and right now in my life, I need that assurance. I just keep telling myself, "Yeah, this isn't a great situation, but can you imagine if your only car was breaking down too?!" The Lord works in mysterious ways, sometimes he works in ways that seem like a really bad joke, but the point is, he's working and he's working on my behalf. I'm grateful to see the very small sliver of silver lining in this one, it's helping this week.